The investment round was spearheaded by RTP Global, with contributions from Picus Capital and prominent angel investors.

The surge in Generative AI utilisation has unveiled a new cybersecurity vulnerability for entities employing this technology. SydeLabs aims to tackle this pressing issue through its AI security and risk management solutions. The firm provides services to detect and pre-empt security and safety vulnerabilities in corporate AI systems, thereby helping to prevent cybersecurity incidents and misuse. Ruchir Patwa and Ankita Kumari founded SydeLabs with the goal of rendering AI applications safe, secure, and abuse-resistant.

Ruchir Patwa brings to the table over ten years of experience in cybersecurity, having led security teams at Google and the Mobile Premier League. Ankita Kumari enhances this expertise with her background in product leadership, notably in developing fraud and risk management solutions at McKinsey & Company, the Mobile Premier League, and CRED. Together, they have amassed significant experience in managing security, risk, and fraud.

Ankita Kumari, Co-Founder at SydeLabs commented: “While we were working on solving security and fraud-led business problems, we saw how business growth and profitability was fuelled by the adoption of risk mitigation measures, despite these measures usually being seen as cost sinks. Since then, we knew we wanted to build solutions in the vulnerability and risk management space to address these growing concerns.

“The adoption of Generative AI in enterprise organisations has seen the cybersecurity attack surface increase substantially. From a security point of view, companies are now bringing a human-like element into systems that were previously not susceptible to social engineering and manipulation. From a compliance perspective, we see systems having access to internal and user data with the ability to take action on that data. We also see the reputational risks emerging with adoption of GenAI systems that can generate undesirable content which can cause harm to a brand, loss of goodwill and further legal risk.”

In its market research with CISOs globally, SydeLabs are seeing increased acknowledgement of these vulnerabilities as enterprises are rapidly adopting Generative AI for various business use cases.

As the company looks to be a holistic AI Security and Risk Management Platform, its solution suite helps detect and prevent vulnerabilities in AI systems thus avoiding attacks, abuse, and non-compliance. By focusing on the intent of attackers, rather than using traditional pattern matching approaches that are traditionally used for cybersecurity, the company is going further in its cybersecurity offering.

Ruchir Patwa, Co-Founder at SydeLabs concluded: “We are building a comprehensive platform for risk management of Generative AI systems, across the entire development lifecycle. This can give a huge productivity boost to enterprises and prevent costs associated with inaction around security and compliance threats. We want to give confidence to enterprises to deploy GenAI applications without having to worry about security and safety blindspots.”

Galina Chifina, Partner on RTP Global’s Asia Investment team added: “We are super excited about the potential SydeLabs has in setting new standards for AI applications that are as secure as they are groundbreaking. We love the vision of Ruchir and Ankita and are happy to back them so early in their journey. SydeLabs' approach to AI security showcases the kind of forward-thinking application of technology we champion at RTP."